Soldier From the Sky
by cc iconoclastic
Summary: Nicol Amalfi emerges alive from the wreckage of the Blitz as all sides in the war race to develop a way of restoring the possibility of nuclear warfare. Meanwhile, a new UN fleet appears hoping to end the war on their terms. NicolOC. AU from Ep 29.
1. Prelude: The Darkest Day

Disclaimer: Clearly, I do not own any part of the Gundam Seed universe. I write fanfiction for personal enjoyment only, and not for personal profit, and so on so forth. This applies to any and all future chapters.

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**Soldier from the Sky**

By cciconoclastic

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Prologue

The Darkest Day

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Perhaps it was only in his imagination, but to Richard Evnan it seemed as if the sky had quite suddenly gotten unnaturally dark for the late afternoon considering that it was approaching summer and that he was currently residing near the equator. Shadows fell over his face as he turned towards the window. Nothing seemed to be out of sorts. All he could glimpse was the calm, pure blue of the Pacific Ocean, which surrounded his current refuge in the islands of the Orb Union. Indeed, all seemed to be calm. _Even more so than usual, in fact, and that takes some doing. The calm before the storm_, he thought, his mind wandering irreverently.

"How perplexing." He said out loud, to no one in particular, as he stood up and put aside his book, leaving it face down and open on the padded arm of the chair.

A faint smile crossed his face then, as his thoughts turned to his companion of the last several months. _Julia will scold me when she returns._ To make matters worse, it was one of her books Richard was treating so carelessly.

He went to the door, pausing briefly to slip on a pair of shoes. Then, he opened the door slowly before stepping onto the front porch of the small cottage built right next to the beach. A faint breeze came off the sea, blowing his hair back lightly, and his smile grew deeper despite the ominous feeling he had expressed inwardly just a moment ago. The house faced west, in the same direction where the sun would set in around three hours. He stepped right to the water's edge, glancing around himself in all directions.

Richard sighed then as he walked along the beach and towards the small wooden dock where an old motorboat was kept. It was meant for leisurely things like fishing or sightseeing, and neither he nor Julia had touched it since they had arrived in this place.

_Something bad is happening._ Intuition or instinct was telling him, but the rational part of him could find no visible reason for that grim thought. He quickly pushed it from his mind. After a moment of pondering the old boat with its peeling paint, he turned and looked out over the gently lapping waves of the sea. He stood on the thick, weathered planks of the dock and wondered when Julia would come home. When he squinted, Richard could almost see the next island over. It was a rather inhospitable-looking and rocky place that was, to his knowledge, completely uninhabited. _It certainly looks the part… _

_That's very strange…_ Now, when he focused, he could see odd colored shapes juxtaposed against the dark gray of the stones across the water. There was a fast-moving shape of red, blue, and white, and a more stationary shape of red and white, among others. The colors were in movement, a faintly lyrical dance that reminded him of something he hadn't thought about for quite some time. Putting his hands over his eyes to shield them from the sun, he squinted again and tried to focus. Suddenly, things seemed to go unnaturally dark again. In the next moment, his eyes widened inadvertently. Those odd colored streaks of light that suddenly appeared – there was no doubt in his mind that it was weapons fire.

xxx

Over a stretch of ocean and upon the inhospitable, rocky ground, a desperate battle played itself out. It was a time for tensions and nerves stretched to the breaking point, just another inevitable extension of a conflict that had been building for months. It was born from the constantly accumulating reasons for mutual hatred between Coordinators and Naturals, reasons that could be counted in blood and body bags. It was born from the imperialism of the Atlantic Federation and other Earth Alliance powers. It was born from the PLANTS' struggle for autonomy. It was born from the Earth Alliance's increasingly desperate and violent bids to preserve itself in a losing war effort in the face of an outcome that seemed almost genetically predetermined.

Perhaps it began long before any of the participants in this particular battle had been born. Perhaps it had only truly started to unfold very recently, on the even of the destruction of the satellite Heliopolis, as the Le Creuset team had prepared its mission there. Either way, it seemed as if this day could well be the end of what started there. Perhaps now all would be fought to its natural, bloody finish before the sun was to set and rise anew.

The Gundams Aegis and Strike rushed against each other, driven by a sort of frenzy neither Athrun Zala nor the pilot of the Strike would ever have wished to indulge in, especially against each other. Nicol Amalfi did not know the whole story – the normally reserved Athrun had been especially reluctant to speak of it – but he had some idea. Ever since the Le Creuset team had first discovered that the Strike was piloted by a fellow Coordinator, Athrun had been behaving very oddly. Nicol had noticed how Athrun's unease grew every time the team faced the legged ship and its most able defender yet again. Something about clashing with the Strike affected Athrun's closest friend on the team badly, though Nicol had yet to discover what that something was.

Now, though, was not the time for such distracting thoughts. Nicol pushed those musings away and refocused his attention on the battle at hand. _I have a job to do._ So he watched and waited for the right moment to act.

Nicol's own Gundam, the Blitz, was in no real shape to throw itself into the thick of things. So he stood idle, hidden from view by the Mirage Colloid shielding technology built into his mobile suit. _Where are Yzak and Dearka?_ Normally, there was no love lost between him and his more… temperamental teammates, but such petty tensions faded away in desperate circumstances like these. They fought well together, as comrades and teammates.

Even if Nicol had little doubt that Athrun – ever the top student in their academy days and easily the best pilot among the four of them – could probably hold his owns, the odds would get better when their other teammates joined the fray. So he looked around again for Yzak and Dearka, but the Gundams Buster and Duel were nowhere to be seen. _No use waiting for them if they're not here_. Nicol turned his attention back to the battle at hand.

It was almost like a simple brawl, with two of the most advanced mobile suits in existence engaged in what was essentially a fistfight. Nicol narrowed his eyes as he observed. The Strike seemed to be gaining the upper hand. He watched with alarm as the metallic fist of the Strike slammed against the Aegis yet again, succeeding in knocking it down and away. Quicker than the un-enhanced human eye could register, the Strike's sword was drawn. There was no doubt in his mind that the downed Aegis would not be able to escape from the attack that would inevitably follow.

Nicol was left with only a split second to react, to decide on what he should do. So he did as his training dictated. He reacted and he chose. In that split second, he deactivated the Mirage Colloid shielding. He slammed the controls to reactivate the Blitz's regular Phase Shift Armor, without pausing to wait for it to completely do so. Then he rushed forward to Athrun's defense.

He had never been one to prefer the often-senseless destruction of war. Yet he had as strong a sense of duty as anyone who had lost family in Bloody Valentine and then enlisted to defend their people as a member of ZAFT. Normally, he wouldn't even have wanted to think that Coordinators and Naturals were inherently and irrevocably different, certainly not different enough to justify the conflict, but the atrocities of Bloody Valentine had proven that there was precious little room for his ideals in the world around them. Athrun Zala was his comrade. The pilot of the Strike was his enemy. Even if Nicol did not prefer to see the world that way, things were truly that simple when it came down to it.

So the Blitz emerged, seemingly from thin air as the blade of the Strike swept around with the goal of ripping apart the Aegis in mind. Nicol pushed the Blitz forward at full speed despite the heavy damage it had already sustained. There was little he could do but prepare to ram the remnants of his weapon right through the Strike. It was a long shot, but he would do what he could to prevent the loss of another comrade. _We've already lost Rusty and Miguel, we can't lose anyone else._

_I could also die._ The thought came to his mind quite suddenly, the voicing of a concept that had been in the realm of possibility ever since he first entered the Academy less than a month after Bloody Valentine. _Life isn't meaningful unless I've done all I can to protect what is important. _There was no room for doubt in these trying times, he told himself. Even if the worst were to happen, he should have no regrets. _For the glory of ZAFT. _

"ATHRUN!" When his voice came out from his throat and over the communications systems, he thought distantly that it didn't really sound like his own. "MOVE AWAY!"

Time slowed to a crawl as he moved forward, desperate to be in time to intercept the Strike's weapon. With Coordinator senses he noted in the back of his mind that the Strike appeared to have hesitated for one moment before the blade started moving far too quickly again. Or was it swinging forward in its arc slowly. Time didn't seem to be moving as it should

Nicol hoped that he would be in time, and then he was. The Strike's sword was cutting into the remnants of the Blitz, and Nicol gasped as part of the cockpit fell to pieces around him. Was this death, and had the blade moved perfectly straight and true, hitting its target and shattering it all too pieces and he along with it? There was pain, he found, but he didn't know if he was feeling it or if he was simply imagining it. The view screens around him shattered from the force of the impact, as did the front of his helmet. The sharp-edged pieces of tempered glass made bloody tracks through his flight suit and his skin.

"Athrun… Run…" It was what he wanted to say, at least, even as he thought he might already be too far gone for last words.

All around him there were the deafening sounds of some kind of explosion, and he thought he heard Athrun's voice calling out his name. The words were desperate with rage and grief, and Nicol wondered if they would be the last things he would ever hear. As he slipped away into darkness, his thoughts drifted to the things he had cared for most in life. His mother… The piano…

xxx

"DAMNIT!" An adrenaline rush or an unusual fit of stupidity – perhaps both combined – had led Richard Evnan quite merrily down the path of one of the more stupid decisions he had ever made.

The goddamned boat was, apparently, not in the most optimal state for performing its intended function. Floating, it managed well enough, but it did not seem easily capable of much beyond that. Even as his eyes had caught an explosion and the resulting red and orange flames, Richard had started running full tilt for the shack behind the house – fuel for the boat was kept there – and there was no way in hell he would be content with just forgetting that a mobile-suit battle had taken place just a narrow stretch of water away. _I am, as ever, a man of action. _He scoffed at that thought.

_Oh but perhaps it was just some wayward fireworks. That would be brilliant, _he quipped in the back of his mind. It also wasn't likely, to say the least. Though it wasn't as if he knew within a hundred percent certainty what the shapes where – they had not resembled any mobile armor he knew of – but it wasn't that hard to guess either. _Even if they don't look like any Ginns or CGues I've ever heard of. They were much too colorful to be that. _Another possibility existed, though. _They wouldn't be those OMNI prototypes the higher-ups were arguing to high heaven over. No way… _Richard didn't want to think about that. Just… Not now.

The little motorboat was inordinately slow, even though he'd filled the fuel tank to the top and it had started out fine. The engine stalled again, making rather alarming sounds somewhere between a cough and a choke. Richard kicked it savagely. _Temper, temper… _There was no use getting angry, and calm was generally good when it came to unexpected situations like this.

He hoped that anything in the mood to shoot a random passerby for rushing onto the scene would be long gone by the time the damned boat finally got him to the opposite shore. As he'd first gotten it started, he had seen other colored shapes bursting from the surface of the water as well as other smaller explosions and more weapons fire. By now though, all seemed calmer. There were still flames upon the rock and in the wreckage, but that was all the movement he could still see.

It was getting closer to evening now, though sunset wouldn't hit for another hour or so, as far as he could tell. _Julia will be worried if she makes it home before I do._ Richard honestly didn't know if he preferred it that way or the other. It would be easier for him if she didn't – he'd have far less to explain, fewer difficult questions to answer with a bald-faced lie – yet he couldn't help but worry. _She'd be alone. It'd be getting dark…_ Then he scoffed at himself again for being ridiculous. _As if there's anything more ferocious than some loud parrots and some overgrown tropical foliage between the cottage and the town, _that snide voice inside him commented.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind in the next moment, as he finally pulled up to the opposite island. He stopped the motorboat near the rocky shore, going over the side and getting his shoes wet in the shallow, bitterly cold water. Richard dragged the boat halfway onto the shore, careful not to let it get too much more banged up than it already was. He rather hoped that it wouldn't drift away on the currents without him. _That'd be a wonderful end to today, wouldn't it? Fitting too. I'd be able to take all the time in the world to come up with a good story for Julia while swimming home. _

All that was left of the incident he had witnessed was a large amount of burning wreckage upon the rocks, most if it the remnants of what had to be a mobile suit. A battle had happened there, he'd assumed correctly. Internally, he assessed the situation, instincts that had been unused for quite some time coming to the fore. Something had severed this suit just below its core, leaving the upper body mostly intact. Whatever had done it had probably hit something volatile on the way, probably causing that first definite explosion he had seen from across the water. Richard headed towards the wreckage, hoping that there weren't any other major explosions forthcoming.

This had all been a damned stupid idea, start to finish, now that he had the time to think about it. Really, he should just have stayed inside, calmly minding his own business and reading Julia's new hardcover edition of some slightly politics-related pulp-fiction produced by some idiot Orb author who had no idea how the Atlantic Federation government actually functioned. _She'll be upset too, because leaving the book like that puts a crease in the binding. _Again he found himself having to push irrelevant thoughts from his mind. _You're losing your edge._

_The suit's pilot might still be alive._ As a decent human being, and for the most part Richard did fancy himself one, there was a moral obligation for him to check, and give help if it was still possible. _There's that Hippocratic oath thing too, if plain old human decency isn't enough for you. _Richard was, after all, ostensibly a student who had been prepared to enter advanced studies in medicine before coming to the Orb islands. _I know off these suits, they're OMNI, anyway. So I guess we're on the same side… in some offhanded way._

His decision made, he went forth, finding the panels of the mobile suit cockpit slightly open. There was enough of an opening that he could strain and pull them aside one by one. There was someone there, bleeding from cuts and gashes. Richard covered his face at the smoke, something in there among the torn wires and broken computer parts was smoldering. The acrid smell of something burning hit his nose, and his renewed rush of adrenaline have him enough strength to quickly reach in and drag the pilot out, putting the unconscious pilot's weight on his own shoulder. Richard dragged the prone body out as quickly as possible. _No use seeing if the whole mess will go up in flames soon._

At what we judged to be a safe distance away, should the remaining pieces of the suit suddenly decide to explode, Richard put his burden down, finally giving himself a chance to look at the pilot he had rescued. He – and he did have the proportions that definitely belonged to a he – wore a red and white flight suit. All that red hadn't just been from blood… The adrenaline rush returned yet again, and Richard leaped back, feeling started and somewhat betrayed by fate. _Red flight suit, not one of ours… He's a damn ZAFT, an Elite no less, a Coordinator… _Which meant he was an enemy in the same offhanded way the soldiers of OMNI were not.

Suddenly he was deadly calm. One hand reached carefully for the gun at his side. He'd taken it out from where he'd first hidden it in that shack, almost as an afterthought, while he fetched the fuel for the boat. With that same calm his hand reached out as he carefully pointed that handgun square at the pilot's chest and his heart. One shot was all he would need. He cocked the gun. It made that familiar clicking noise. Then his finger was resting carefully on the trigger and one moment more was all he'd need. All he had to do was apply just enough pressure…

Moments passed. The colors of the sky shifted in preparation for the fast approaching sunset, and then intensified. The waves continued to crash against the rocky shore. The world seemed to fade until nothing existed except Richard and the enemy. The sands of time continued their constant drift down within the cosmic hourglass or some other stupid shit like that. Time went on, but the point was that nothing else of significance happened.

_I can't do this._ Richard thought as he let out the breath he'd been holding. A good number of months ago, this would have come as easily as breathing, but something had changed since then. He was realizing this suddenly. He had not known until just now how much these months of being idle had changed him. With an anguished cry filled with rage directed more against himself than anyone else, he threw his weapon aside. _Even if he's ZAFT… Hell, I don't even know if the guy's still alive. _Still, he couldn't just stand there forever, tearing at his hair, and trying to figure out when exactly he suddenly became such a cowardly sap. Julia would worry, after all, if he dallied out here for too long.

With a heavy sigh and after taking a deep breath so as to gather his wits about him, Richard walked back towards the unconscious pilot, having resolved to do what has morally right. _Now that all the other options are closed off…_ If any of the people he had honestly ever respected throughout his life could see him now, they would never stop laughing. _Then they'd do a great deal more. _Such was a thought for another day, however, when he actually had time to think.

Slowly, he removed the pilot's helmet, and was startled to see the face of a boy who was likely a good deal younger than he was. _Julia's age? No way…_ The boy was still breathing, and that made things more complex and simple, all at once. Pale green hair – an odd color – and there was blood on his face from a head would that seemed superficial and not particularly alarming to his eye. With fairly limited field medicine experience and only a limited amount of pre-medical training that he had mostly ignored, he wasn't in a position to know for sure if there were any internal injuries. _Coordinators are supposed to heal so fast it's almost irrelevant anyway. _

As there were no significant still bleeding, open wounds, the boy seemed stable enough to move. There was a first-aid kit in the boat. Richard would be able to patch up the more alarming cuts before he brought pilot-boy home.

"You'll have a lot of explaining to do when you wake up, ZAFT-boy." Richard muttered when he finally started the boat for home. The boy with green hair did not respond, understandably enough.

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Author's Notes: Wow, it's been two years since I last updated or did anything with this story. I've gone back to it several times since then, and this first chapter has been edited about four or five times since I first wrote it all those years ago. I'd like to try finishing it this time, and I've edited it yet again. This will still contain canon male character/female OC romance among many other things involving a very large cast of original characters. I will do my utmost to prevent Mary Sue or Gary Stu tendencies from appearing.

Like any other author, I adore getting reviews, and appreciate any constructive criticism. I'm definitely still growing as a writer.

Thank you so much for reading!


	2. Part 1: Difficult Questions

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Part 001

Difficult Questions

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By the time the sun truly began its descent beneath the horizon, the motorboat had managed to gasp and wheeze its way back to the dock. Richard Evnan could not quite suppress a sigh of relief as he stepped off from the boat and onto the thick, weathered planks. _It would have been the perfect end to a perfect day if I'd ended up having to swim to shore dragging pilot-boy along. _

At this point, he had ample grounds for deciding that the whole Good Samaritan business was simply not for him. He reaffirmed that conclusion several times over as he half-carried, half-dragged the unknown pilot to the house's spare bedroom. Altogether, it was no easy feat because the boy wasn't all that much smaller or lighter than he was. _I am in horrendous shape. _It was almost shameful.

On closer inspection, he saw that the wounds the pilot had sustained were pretty much limited to gashes and bruises that appeared alarming, but were superficial nonetheless. All in all, his injuries did not appear that serious, especially considering the nature of what he had survived. As far as Richard could tell, there were no signs of internal bleeding.

Normal civilian logic still would have dictated that it would be ideal to immediately call for an actual doctor or to take pilot-boy to a hospital of course. _He just survived his mobile suit being nearly torn in half, after all. _Still, even if such a thing had been an urgent necessity, there was really no way to get the boy to the only hospital on the island – a facility that was on the small and primitive side in the town on the other side of the island – in a timely manner. _There'd be too many questions anyway. Orb law enforcement is a right pain in the ass in the best of times. No telling how they'd handle something that actually qualifies as suspicious. _No, going to the hospital was definitely out of the question.

"Since it's already such a miracle that you're still alive, let's just assume your luck is going to keep holding." Richard said as he dressed the boy's wounds while his "patient" slept heavily. "I know for a fact that Coordinators bounce back from things pretty quickly, anyway. All those controversial alterations to your genetic material have to count for something, right?" This he asked half-heartedly as his thoughts turned back towards the ongoing war that suddenly seemed a hell of a lot closer. "You probably have a broken rib or two, but we'll deal with that when you're awake enough to demand painkillers."

When he'd finished cleaning up and bandaging the most obvious wounds, Richard stood up and put the first-aid supplies away. Pilot-boy's rather beaten up flight suit was folded up neatly where he'd left it on the side of the bed. This reminded him of all the explaining he'd have to do for Julia when she returned. How was he going to explain it all to her, anyway? He pondered the question at length. _Every explanation I can think of is either exponentially more stupid than the last, or just defeats the purpose of making one up in the first place by leading straight into more uncomfortable questions, _he thought, bemused.

He could imagine in excruciating detail what would happen as soon as Julia stepped in and saw that something strange was afoot. _She'll ask who he is and I'll lie through my teeth and then lie some more for good measure. I can't tell her he's a ZAFT pilot of course, and she'll still be alarmed no matter what sort of story I come up with. _He sighed and felt the beginnings of a hellish headache growing. _It doesn't really matter what I say because she's just going to worry. _That thought mostly annoyed him, though he also couldn't help but think: _poor girl, she doesn't really deserve any of this. _

His younger roommate hated even the most fleeting suggestion of war, especially after they'd come here together for the express purpose of avoiding it entirely. She hadn't been working with peace activists – of the sort who talked a lot and loudly but did very little, no less – for nothing when they'd first met. She was young, but fiercely idealistic, even if she had not the faintest real idea of how to put those ideals into practice. _Young and woefully misguided… I'll bet pilot-boy's just like Julia in that way. _In his personal experience, soldiers could be divided into two very general categories: the older, more professional, and far more cynical or the younger, idealistic, and ultimately easily brainwashed sort. His "patient" couldn't be much older than fifteen or sixteen, leaving him solidly in the latter category in Richard's mind until proven otherwise.

As he washed his hands and dried them, Richard's thoughts wandered in meaningless circles until they were interrupted by the familiar sounds of a bicycle. It stopped just before quiet footsteps made their way up the porch steps and then to the front door. It could only be one person.

There was a knock. "Richard, I sort of forgot my keys." She sounded rather sheepish. "Could you open the door for me? Richard?"

He sighed heavily. He'd certainly had a lot of things to sigh about today, and he could foresee plenty of opportunities to accumulate still more coming his way. _Here we go._ With a cheery smile, he opened the front door. Upon seeing that she had placed laden grocery bags on their faded old welcome mat, he took them in hand.

"Thanks." Julia Shue said, returning his smile shyly as she entered behind him, holding another grocery bag in her hands.

"How are you this fine evening, my dearest Julia." Eventually, he knew, she would notice that something was slightly off about the whole situation, at which point he would have to start explaining his very eventful day. He would put that mess off as long as possible. "Haven't I told you not to start for home so late? The roads to the town aren't good, and you might slip and fall in the dark or something if you're not careful."

"Yes, Richard, I know, you've said it many times. Just as many times as I tell you that I'm not a child, in fact." She laughed though, mood clearly brightening at the familiar lull of friendly banter. She became visibly annoyed a moment later when her eyes rested on the book that was still facedown and held open on the armchair he'd abandoned hours before. "Oh, that was almost brand new…" Her expression was stern as she went to pick it up, though that faded quickly. "It's alright though," she added hastily, ever afraid to cause offense.

"Sorry about that. It's really okay if you want to scold me for it. That's hardly the way I ought to treat your books." He shrugged, nonchalant. The idea of Julia's anger wasn't all that threatening, _especially if it puts off having to explain pilot-boy's situation. _"We've been living together for months anyway. Treat me as you would a particularly exasperating older brother."

She gave him an indecipherable but rather grim expression at that, though it disappeared quickly. "It's really alright though. I mean it; it's such a small thing." Then she laughed good-naturedly. "I'll also admit I dallied a bit more than I needed to in town. You're within your rights for scolding me for coming back so late. It was my turn to cook dinner wasn't it? I'm sorry, I hope you didn't wait for me and made something for yourself. I bought groceries, clearly, because we were running low… I'm rambling horribly aren't I?" Her voice trailed off as she realized that he was being uncharacteristically quiet. "Is something wrong, Richard? Are you alright?" She turned to him, concerned.

_Can't put it off much longer. I might as well go for it. _"We have a guest." He announced abruptly. "Something happened today on the island across from us. I'm alright so don't worry about me. A small aircraft crashed or something, and I saw flames so I went over to investigate. The pilot was injured so I brought him back here because there was no one else around to help." _Not quite the truth, but close enough to it. It misses the mark only if one is overly strict on issues of interpretation and omission… _Making the story up wasn't as hard as he'd thought it could be.

Her eyes went wide with shock. "Was it a military aircraft?" She asked, her voice suddenly a dry whisper. Her shoulders shook, an almost imperceptible tremor, and she tried to laugh it off though she failed miserably. "So is one party or the other trying to violate neutrality laws again?" The 'again' was in reference to the recent tragedies at Heliopolis, which had clearly occurred in violation of international law, though such a concept hardly mattered these days.

He hadn't thought she would react so strongly when he'd barely said any of the stuff that would actually be upsetting about it. "Julia…" He moved to help her to a chair but she waved him away and sat down on her own, eyes staring at their dining table. "I don't think it was a military aircraft. I mean, it looked like one of those little planes the tourists go in to sightsee, you know?" It was an odd thing he thought, how even if cold-blooded violence was no longer something he was capable of, the lying still came easily enough. _I can still look her in the eyes and lie. That's still easy. _"Are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm fine." She said too quickly, though an almost tangible relief did settle over her at his reassurances. Julia looked up at him then, a resigned sadness in her eyes as she bit her lip "I guess it's pretty bad that this wasn't the first question I thought to ask, but is he alright now? The pilot, I mean. If the plane crashed, I can't imagine it'd have been easy to get away without pretty serious injuries…"

"I, for one, don't hold your apparent heartlessness against you." He joked. "We're both fugitives here, aren't we?" His ill thought out attempt at a lighthearted joke promptly fell flat and she stared at him, silent. "The pilot's recovering. He's sleeping in the guest-room, and there really isn't anything serious, as far as I can tell. There's really nothing anyone can do but wait until he gets up."

"That's good." Julia said, having completely regained her composure as she stood up from the dining table. "Is there anything I can do? I'd probably be no help when it comes to taking care of injuries, but if there's anything else?"

"Sure… We should probably keep watch on him throughout the night. You can take one shift and I'll take the other." He told her as he moved to help her put away the groceries.

They were silent then as they sorted things and put them away in the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets, going through the motions of a routine that they had gotten used to since they came. Though this particular day had brought more than its share of disruptions, they were content for the moment that even if something unexpected had emerged, their peaceful existence remained secure for the moment.

xxx

Hours later, Julia Shue sat quietly at the desk in the dark guest room, absently flipping through the pages of a book – required reading from her suddenly aborted time as a student – and trying hard to stay away. Richard had told her to take the first shift watching over the patient through the night, on the off chance that his condition took a turn for the worst, in which case they'd have to scramble to get him emergency medical assistance.

Sighing, she rested her forehead on the arm she'd rested on the desk and turned to look at the glowing numbers of the digital alarm clock, which told her that it was long past midnight. She groaned at being up so late and tried to go back to her reading. Finally, when she felt her eyes threatening to close yet again, she decided that it might be time to look for more interesting reading material. Revolutionary, ground-breaking, and generally important De Celtigar's treatise on the new era of international relations might have been according to top academics the world over, but riveting to an exhausted mind it most certainly was not.

Julia pondered the motley collection of books she'd brought downstairs in anticipation of her task for the evening – which had spread into early morning by now – and tried to decide what she should attempt to read next. There was one of those novels that Richard teased her for liking and also another of her more intellectually weighty volumes, another former textbook. She and Richard had both been students once, in a time that now seemed very distant. It hadn't even been a year ago, in truth, but she still felt as if it had been a very long time ago. _Things were very different then._

"When did things get so complicated?" She asked the empty silence around her, sighing again. She really was so tired.

_If things had stayed simple Richard and I would be finishing our second semester right about now. I'd be writing long term papers on political theory or obscure historical events. He'd be getting ready to graduate and preparing to go to medical school. _There was no real point to thinking about such things, though, Julia knew. That was all in the past, and even then the world hadn't exactly been simple. The war would still have escalated around them to the point it was at now. _It's very self-centered and naïve of me to think anything that really matters would have changed if things had stayed easy for us. I'm such a child…_

To distract herself, she turned her thoughts to their guest. The poor boy looked to be around her age. Fifteen or so was very young for a person to be able to pilot even civilian aircraft, and she thought that he was certainly far too young to endure an accident that left him very fortunate to even be alive. _Was he alone?_ Probably, since Richard hadn't mentioned there being anyone else at the scene. _Was he scared? _

Julia got up to move the chair from the desk closer to the bed. She was supposed to be watching over the injured boy anyway, and so she ought to be responsible about it. _I try to read anymore and I'll really fall asleep. _Though he was bandaged and bruised in several places along his arms and even on his face, the boy seemed to be sleeping very peacefully.

"I wonder what your story is." She said, breaking through the silence again. "I wonder if you're originally from somewhere near here? Or maybe you're a tourist? Do you like it here in Orb? It's very quiet here, and it's one of so few places that have stayed quiet."

Except for the faint music of ocean waves crashing against the sand, a sound that had its own comforting sort of presence, there was little else around them but silence. Julia rather liked living on the island. There was a time when she had lived in a city far away, and the sounds there had been of a wholly different sort. The sounds there had hardly been musical, between the constant din of traffic and human life rattling on around her twenty-four hours a day.

She knew that she preferred this new vista by far, even if there were moments when she felt devastatingly lonely, mostly when Richard took a turn running whatever small errands they needed done in town. There were even times when she felt lonely while Richard was also home. They were friends, close friends even, the bond between then strengthened by a number of very recent and rather harrowing shared experiences, but they also hadn't known each other for all that long. She didn't really feel comfortable being completely open with him about some things.

_I'm just delusional or paranoid if I ever imagine that I can't trust him, after he's been so generous, taking me in when I have nowhere else to go. _This house was Richard's property, inherited from a distant relative who had passed on long ago, as he'd explained to her when they first came. _I don't have any good reason to be distant or closed off about things._ _Ugh, I'm rambling in my thoughts. I must be completely exhausted. _

Julia resolved to turn her thoughts to more optimistic things. There was no point to wallowing in self-pity. "Let me tell you about Richard. He's the person who helped you, and he's a very dear friend…"

_Oh Richard,_ and once again she was getting lost in her thoughts, though these were more pleasant than the ones before. _So long as I only think of the good things…_ A long time ago, she had uncharitably considered him rather temperamental. _He's always had his good moments though, even if they were very rare at first. _She could still remember the first time they had met at the University of Berkeley Pacifica, among a small but growing crowd of peace activists. All of them had been young and fervently idealistic in the face of a world where reality was getting harsher and more violence-prone by the day. His membership in the group predated hers, actually, though the two hadn't met until weeks after she joined.

None of them had realized how risky even peaceable protest and dissidence was in the increasingly authoritarian Atlantic Federation. The day after Christmas there had been an incident at the government buildings near the university – a fire that could easily have been completely accidental – and by New Years people had started disappearing. She and Richard had both been away at the time – he had been visiting medical schools and she had been seeing friends – and they'd been splitting the costs of a hotel room while both of them were in Orb. One of the last to be arrested had called Richard and Julia, warning them against returning to the Atlantic Federation at all.

_Now I'm going to feel sad again…_ It made her feel so weak that she had been the one to convince Richard that they should stay far away from Berkeley Pacifica. She had not only made to choice to flee, but she had also convinced him to stay with her. It was at her urging that both of them were now in hiding, more or less. What had happened to the strength that had driven her to join the other students in "Commonality" in the first place? They'd all known that the government of the Atlantic Federation was heavy-handed when it came to cracking down on dissent. If one didn't stand by their ideals even in the face of such things, what was left to them?

"We shouldn't have run…" She whispered. _Great, there's that self-pity again. _To distract herself, she quickly changed the focus of her wandering thoughts. "I wonder who you are."

Hesitantly, she reached a hand out to touch one of his, then she pulled away as the two made contact, so briefly that she barely felt it. His hand was colder than hers, but still warm enough that she was confident that he was in health as good as could be expected, given the circumstances.

With another slow and hesitant gesture, she reached out to the sleeping boy again. This time, she brushed a lock of his hair away from his calm features, careful not to touch the bandage Richard had applied to his forehead. His hair was a rather unique color – a pale green shade – but she thought that it was rather nice. She noted the bruise on the side of his face with sympathy. She wondered what color his eyes were.

"Your friends must be out there, somewhere, worrying about you and wondering where you've gone." Julia said to the downed pilot, doing her best to sound cheerful, even if he couldn't hear. "For them to hear that the plane went down by accident, with no way of knowing you're okay, they must be very worried."

xxx

"We have to leave before Orb's patrol ships hit the area again. Look, down there, that's all that' left to see." The pilot of the ZAFT transport craft was saying, gesturing with one hand while the other was on the controls. "I understand that you're upset because one of your teammates was shot down today, but there's nothing more you can do. If the Orb navy shoots us down on their next pass through here it would all have been for nothing. Look, we're violating neutral territory and international agreement far more than the higher-ups have authorized as is. This is not a stealth or combat aircraft, and we can't risk engaging Orb forces. We need to get back to base."

"I don't care! What can we accomplish just flying over this island anyway? We need to land and look for Nicol. How do we even know that he's dead?" Yzak Jule was yelling, as was his habit.

They were in one of those rather unwieldy transport aircraft normally used for ferrying mobile suits within the Earth's atmosphere. Those vessels were indeed among the things most easily seen on enemy radar and also among the things most easily downed with relatively minimal effort. Kyo Yoshino still remembered quite clearly the recent incident when a single Skygrasper from the legged ship had damaged the transport carrying Athrun's Aegis seemingly by accident. It had resulted in their temporary team leader remaining well and truly lost for an entire night. The situation now was far graver. Kyo had been dispatched on a half-hearted search effort near the island where the Blitz had nearly been obliterated by the Strike several hours earlier.

This was not a mission Kyo wanted to be on, callous as that sentiment was. In all honesty, this was likely to be an entirely futile effort. _You're an insensitive bastard for thinking that. _Still, another part of him went on: _It's the truth though. We don't have time for this. We need to be preparing to engage the Strike again – it's our fault that our mission of taking down the Archangel has yet to be completed in the first place – the boy's probably already dead. _Kyo found himself slightly appalled at the cold nature of his own thoughts. _That boy is only fifteen years old. He's your teammate. _

Yet he couldn't quite summon the sentiment that ought to follow from that fact. The strongest emotions he had surrounding the whole situation were more annoyance and even anger at the way Commander Le Creuset was handing the whole situation. When it came to his actual teammates, Kyo Yoshino felt very little. Even if he was a full member of the Le Creuset team, just like Nicol and the other three young and recently-graduated red-uniform Elites, he'd never felt like part of that core circle of noteworthy pilots assigned between the warships Vesalius and Gamow. This was despite the fact that Kyo was also an Elite, though from a different graduating class at the Academy. Altogether, he had never been close to the younger pilots.

Additionally, though his Elite status made it clear that he was a more than competent pilot, his specialty lay elsewhere. The vast majority of his on-duty experience was as part of ZAFT intelligence forces. This left Kyo uniquely out of place when it came to the dynamics of the Le Creuset team.

Until this recent disastrous encounter with the Strike, Kyo had been more concerned with wondering why Commander Le Creuset had dispatched him to the Earth's surface with the younger boys more than anything else. The four were more than capable of handling the legged ship and dealing with the fifth of OMNI's prototype mobile suits. This was all about their bordering on silly rivalry with the damn thing, after all. It certainly wasn't his. Yes, it had hurt when Miguel Aiman, a former classmate and dear friend, had died at the hands of the Strike. Still, war could not become personal. It made otherwise well-trained and capable soldiers irrational.

_Commander Le Creuset is a fool for letting these relatively untested kids run an operation that was already so personal to them. What is he playing at leaving them without supervision from a more experienced commanding officer anyway? _While Kyo didn't doubt that Athrun Zala would one day be an excellent officer, that was a far cry from saying he was ready to command a dangerous operation on his own right now. It was also painfully obvious to the entire part of the team currently stationed on earth that Athrun could not remain cool, collected, and rational when it came to engaging the Strike.

Kyo cleared his throat. "Yzak, he's right. Look, the Blitz is in pieces on the rocks. There's nothing more to see." As he said this, he wondered if he should also try to do more the comfort this boy, who was still his teammate even if he was also an exceedingly temperamental little snot. "There's nothing more we can do. I'm sorry, but this is war. When something like this happens, we just have to go on and do our jobs."

For a moment, the other pilot looked as if he'd like nothing better than to slam his fist square into Kyo's jaw and then somehow manage to throw him out of the plane. Kyo found himself honestly wondering if it would be best to back away. Though Yzak Jule was a ridiculously good pilot for his age and a highly capable strategist when he put his mind to it, he also had an unfortunate propensity for being unreasonable and quick to anger when he was in a bad mood. _Which is almost all the time – the only reason why our good Commander lets him get away with an attitude like that is because he is damned good – even then that scar's a testament to the fact that he really needs to grow up. _A completely still moment passed with nothing untoward or out-of-place occurring. It looked as if Yzak had managed to control his notorious temper for now.

Even so, there was still a tic going in his forehead, and he fumed visibly before finally spitting out a response. "Fine." Was all he said, blue eyes narrowed, face and clenched fists showing quite clearly that his sudden rage was far from being gone completely. "We'll go back to base."

Kyo had been rather surprised when Yzak of all people appeared to have such a strong reaction to the death of this teammate in particular. It wasn't so much the nature of his response that was out of character, colored as it was mostly by rage. Kyo had heard Yzak's yelling and slamming on the locker doors from the corridor outside the change-room. Nicol Amalfi and Yzak Jule had never been particularly close. After Rusty Mackenzie had been killed during the operation at Heliopolis, the four remaining team-members from that graduating class had become very clearly polarized. The calmer and quieter Athrun and Nicol on the one side presented a stark contrast to the far more arrogant and occasionally aggravating Yzak and Dearka. _They're all teammates though, and classmates too. It's understandable that Yzak would feel so strongly. You should at least be sensitive to that, Yoshino._

Yzak had actually been the one to propose the last-ditch search mission. He had been the one to push the proposal through. Naturally, he had also been the first to volunteer. Throughout the whole argument surrounding the matter, Athrun Zala had been dead silent except for when he voiced his approval in his official capacity as team leader. The expression on the Zala boy's face had been one of quietly smoldering rage being gradually replaced with the resolve to seek something akin to vengeance. Dearka Elthmann had been angry as well, his expression more resolute and serious than Kyo had ever seen it.

And why was Kyo here? He couldn't really answer that question. _Oh Miguel, if only you were still here. You'd know what to do. They actually listened to you. I know you cared a lot about these kids. I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to help fix this mess of a situation, I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to prevent it from happening in the first place. I'm sorry I let Le Creuset give them the free rein to drag themselves into a situation like this for nothing. _Not that Kyo would have been able to change anything had he tried. He had no authority of his own, and it wasn't for nothing that it was whispered throughout the highest-ranking officers in ZAFT that Le Creuset would soon be promoted to being one of the youngest generals in the history of ZAFT. _I'm just part of the rank and file, and most of my achievements have been in espionage anyway. People like Le Creuset don't acknowledge those who didn't earn it with guns blazing._

"I'm just as angry about this as you are Yzak." Kyo told him eventually, after the silence had stretched out enough to be distinctly uncomfortable. "I won't be able to do as much, but you remember what Athrun said. We're going to chase down the Archangel and the Strike with it. They'll pay for what they've done."

"I'll shoot the damned bastard down this time." Yzak said, the rage in eyes flaring up anew at the mention of that name. After a time he seemed to become calmer, and the next time he spoke, Kyo could hear an undertone of bitterness in his voice. "Nicol is – was – a better person than I am, in a lot of ways. He held on to his ideals whenever he could, even if they had no place in what we've been doing."

The transport flew back to base. The silence and tension between the passengers was so thick it could, as the cliché went, be cut with a knife. Though Kyo had never been particularly fond of Yzak as a teammate, he found himself wishing he could say something to offer reassurance or comfort. _But what is there to say? Nicol was too young for this, as we all are. This is a tragedy. That's all there is to it, really. _

_This is all a sorry state of affairs, isn't it?_ Wasn't death supposed to be one of those things that made everything stop? Weren't people supposed to be paralyzed by grief when such a thing came to pass? Instead, the lot of them would make haste to seek vengeance, driven more by rage than grief.

Kyo Yoshino couldn't help but think, quite secretly because he hadn't know the boy well enough that his opinion on the matter would be valued, that this wasn't the correct way to respond to Nicol's death. _He didn't die so that we would go and hunt down someone else, to punish them for the act. He lived hoping that he would one day see peace and stability in our world. When any of them destroy the Strike, will they truly have brought that dream closer to being? _It was a question he could not answer. If there was an answer, he didn't think it was one he wanted to know.

xxx

"Richard, you really should have woken me up." Julia was telling him as she came down the staircase. "You really didn't need to carry me up to bed."

"You're welcome." Richard Evnan informed her with a smile that could only possibly be described as "cheeky" considering the early hour of the morning as he bustled around making a simple breakfast and coffee. "You sleep like a rock, and it isn't as if sleeping in a chair all night is the best thing to do for your neck and back. You're already a lousy enough morning person as it is."

"Right," was the best she could come up with as a response. She quickly switched to a more important subject than friendly small talk. "Nothing happened last night after I fell asleep, right?" She peeked into the guest room as she made her way towards the kitchen. "I feel bad. I was supposed to be watching him."

"It might not have been polite," Richard joked. "However, pilot boy is still perfectly fine, as well as can be expected anyway. He hasn't woken up yet, but I wouldn't worry about that for another day or two." He paused for a moment, trying to remember what he'd wanted to ask her. "Oh right, is it fine with you if I go into town today? I wanted to replenish our first-aid supplies. I realized yesterday that we're running woefully low on pretty much everything."

"Oh, of course, that's fairly important." Julia replied. "I'll hold down the fort and watch your patient." She sat at the dining table and watched him as he lifted the hot toast from the toaster with the tip of his fingers the moment the slices popped up.

"I'm not quite a doctor, so its not theoretically accurate to refer to him as my patient." Richard informed her with a bright smile as he put the toast on plates, wiped his hands on a convenient dishtowel, and then went to where his laptop computer was in the adjoining living room.

"Are you watching a newscast again?" Julia asked.

"Force of habit darling… Given your field of study, wouldn't you agree that it's good to stay informed about the news and all?" He glanced up from where he sat on the couch, having dragged the piano bench up to it so he could use it as a desk.

She yawned before she informed him, "You really shouldn't slouch so much."

"On now, don't start in on my multitude of bad habits again. You make us sound like a married couple that way." He laughed out loud.

After that, she laughed too, a light and happy sound. "Don't tease me, or I'll stop cooking the dishes you actually like when it's my turn. I'll also put tomatoes in everything from now on."

"It'd be hubris on your part to assume that such a development would represent a loss to me. I'll just cook for myself. I'm far better at it than you are anyway." He punctuated the speech with a grandiose flourish of his hands.

She went quiet then, apparently tired of trading light-hearted verbal jabs with him, even if it was all in good fun. Julia had never been the sort who considered it too important to get the last word in any kind of discussion, after all. When Richard had also been a member of the Commonality peace activists' group with her starting several months ago, he'd always found her presence at meetings easy to forget, since she tended to be so quiet.

"I'll finish up breakfast." Julia said, finally, returning to the kitchen and leaving him in peace with his computer.

As he refocused his attention on his laptop, he could hear her moving around in the kitchen. At the calmest of times and when she'd had a much greater excess of sleep, Julia still wasn't much of a morning person. Her demeanor would brighten up significantly and she would be in much better humor only after she'd eaten something. This left him free to watch the news web-cast he'd brought up on his computer in peace. It'd become a morning ritual of sorts to him in the last several months, useful for making him feel less isolated from the world at large while he stayed on this quiet island.

Richard found himself zoning out during a short segment about OMNI's renewed push into the very troublesome former United States of South America. It was an ongoing story that had been unfolding for several months, but not a particularly significant one in the grand scheme of things. The situation there was precarious, but far from being strategically important in context of the larger conflict currently engulfing the Earth and the PLANTS. Sure the resurgent USSA currently held the Porta Panama mass driver, but so long as OMNI still held one at Kaoshiung, it was not particularly important.

There probably wasn't a shadow of a doubt in anyone's mind over who would ultimately win out in that regional conflict: the multinational military force of OMNI or some relatively weak resistance politicians with an infinitesimal militia and no real options but waging a long guerilla war? _I honestly do wonder,_ he thought sarcastically. It was altogether not a difficult question to answer.

Suddenly, the image of a familiar place flashed on the screen, and Richard turned the volume up, eyes narrowed. It was footage taken on the other side of their island, as the reporter was interviewing someone from the town commenting on the strange lights that had been seen nearby the day before. The news anchor commented on how the incident was possibly related to the foreign military ship that the Orb navy had destroyed for violating their territorial waters a matter of days ago. _The leaders here refuse to comment, as a matter of course. _Perhaps, the news anchor went on to say, despite their country's neutrality, they weren't quite as safe from less peaceful happenings as they might have thought.

Richard found himself wishing, against all expectations, that it wasn't true.

xxx

Author's Notes: Another edited chapter, and again I've edited this about four or five times in the last two years. I hope to get the first completely new chapter online in the next week or so, and will definitely try to do a better job updating this time around.

As always, I adore reviews like most other fanfiction writers, and always appreciate constructive criticism of any sort. I'll do individual review responses for any new reviews I get, if any.

Thank you so much for reading!


	3. Part 2: In Loving Memory

xxx

Part 002

In Loving Memory

xxx

Kyo Yoshino slept fitfully and woke up of his own accord long before his alarm clock was scheduled to do the same at a bright and early 0600 hours so he could meet the others on time for breakfast in the mess hall at 0630. He showered and the returned to his broom closet of a room. It was tiny, but at least it was his own for the duration of their time stationed at the Carpentaria base, a concession to his Elite red-uniform status. _It's still only 5:15 and I have way too much time on my hands._

Given what had happened the day before, there was now too much on his mind for him to try and get in a bit more sleep before he went back to the daily grind of being a ZAFT soldier. The fact that today wasn't just another day for them complicated matters further. _There's very serious work to be done in a couple of hours. _The other Elites in the part of the Le Creuset team currently deployed planet-side would be out for blood today. The normally cool-headed Athrun had sworn as such.

Once again, Kyo found himself cursing the Commander for leaving such a young and relatively untested boy in charge. _Not that you're one to talk. The sum total of your own experience on a battlefield is probably about equal to Zala's. _The issue was more that Athrun Zala could not think straight when it came to fighting the Archangel and the Strike. This had already been proven several times over.

With an exasperated sigh, Kyo hung up his towel on the closet door, and glanced around the room trying to figure out what to do with himself for the hour or so he now had to waste. The picture frames he'd put on the small desk caught his eye, and he sat down and truly looked at those photographs for the first time in a long while. They brought a smile to his face. There were two pictures of his family and one of himself and his old team, when they'd been stationed on Earth to protect some ZAFT installations in the Oceania Union. That particular photograph reminded him of another he kept in his wallet, with his ID badge, and he rummaged through his desk drawer to find it.

There he was, a Kyo Yoshino who'd been younger then and far less weary. In the picture he was dressed in civilian clothing and laughing as a similarly dressed Miguel Aiman elbowed him in the shoulder. _Miguel… I can't believe you're not… here anymore. _They'd graduated together, and even if Miguel had missed out on red-uniform status by a very narrow margin – he'd fumbled one part of a marksmanship practical during the graduation exams – Kyo had always felt that Miguel was by far the better pilot and solider. The "Magical Bullet of the Dusk" had gone on to prove that in time. _Ridiculous name, but there was no arguing with the fact that Miguel was exceptional._ He smiled bitterly as he recalled the day that picture had been taken. They'd been playing basketball right before, in a rare moment not occupied by ZAFT business.

_Good god, I wish you were still here._ Kyo had to hold back tears now that he was finally letting himself really think about what the team had lost when Miguel was shot down. They'd been so caught up in pursuing the Strike and the Archangel since then that Kyo really hadn't had the chance to process his feelings about it. _How did you put up with Commander Le Creuset without wanting to punch him in the face for that smirk he constantly has on as he gives the most unfounded, irrational orders? You were a far better soldier than I, Miguel, because I have no idea what that man is getting at half the time. _For people as young as Miguel and now Nicol to die in battle… The world around them had gone mad. That was the only explanation Kyo could think of for all that had happened to them recently.

Also in the photograph was a young girl, who had been about eleven or twelve at the time. Miori Satou was the daughter of a civilian researcher – a physicist – who'd been working at one of the facilities the team had been assigned to protect. The thought offered a welcome distraction to Kyo, reminding him of his promise to write to her again soon in the email he'd sent her nearly a month before.

_Well, that gives me something to do._ Kyo wiped away the traces of tears from his face. _No more moping and crying for you. It's very… undignified considering your role. _For some reason he found it easier to write to Miori than to his parents when it came to discussing his thoughts on being a soldier. _Mother and father have enough to deal with, with their only son out fighting. I couldn't burden them with my doubts about the whole mess as well. _With a wistful smile, he pressed the button to turn on the computer console provided by the base and opened up his civilian email account.

Miori had written to him again, he saw, an email dated from about a week ago. He smiled as he read it though the things she talked about were seemingly worlds away. She would be taking her entrance examinations for universities soon. Her father was still working much too hard, leaving her alone most of the time. She was really growing fond of a boy in her class – this part made him frown, but not as much as the next part – except that he was probably going to enlist just like his older brother. _People as young as that keep getting pulled in…_

Writing to Miori wasn't shaping up to be as much of a distraction as Kyo had wanted. Still, he dutifully composed her a lengthy reply, wishing her luck on her upcoming exams and explaining that he was also in good health and generally as well as could be expected. He'd wanted to write to her about his increasingly mixed feelings about being on this particular team in ZAFT, but as he typed out that part of the email he realized that it all sounded rather silly on paper. _It sounds like I'm whining. _It didn't make sense to burden her with his concerns either, especially when he couldn't go into any particular detail about what the Le Creuset team was actually doing in communications with a civilian. _All of that is classified information, you idiot. Do you want to get yourself court-martialed?_

"I promise to go home and visit the next time I'm sent on leave." That sounded optimistic enough, if a little abrupt. "That'll have to do." _It means at least, that I absolutely am going to return to the PLANTS. _

Eventually it was 0630 hours and time for the Le Creuset team to assemble. Their day-to-day routine went on, and then it was afternoon and time to prepare for the operation Athrun had spoken of the day before. Each of them dressed in perfectly pressed uniforms, ready to switch to flight-suits and launch at a moments' notice. Each of them became calm and resolute as they prepared yet again to take on the Archangel and the Strike.

At that time, Kyo Yoshino pushed all of the growing doubts from his mind, along with all his thoughts of the more peaceful world they were trying to protect. There was simply no room for such thoughts, given what they were setting out to do. They would accept nothing less that day than blood for blood.

xxx

"Hey Julia, I'm leaving now, alright?" Richard Evnan called out as he stood by the front door. "Did you think of anything else we needed?"

"Wait just a second!" Her voice came down from the second floor and he heard the pattering of her feet down the staircase as he stood and waited. "I wrote down a list, there were just a few little things…"

A moment later she appeared with a half sheet of paper in her hand and a cheerful smile on her face. As she handed him the list, she paused. "Oh wait, before I forget…" She went to the hall closet and fetched one of his jackets, a light and water-resistant windbreaker, also handing that to him.

"So what's this for?" Richard asked.

She frowned at him. "Didn't you hear the weather report while you were watching the newscast? They said there would be a storm today. I mean, you should definitely try to get back before it hits, but you should bring a coat just in case." Then she shrugged.

"Oh right, that. I never pay much attention to the weather report – far less exciting than most other parts of the news you know – thanks for remembering." Richard told her. "Of course, a spot of rain is far from enough to keep me down." Then he laughed and ruffled her hair. "Thanks, though, seriously."

"Don't do that. But, you're welcome." She sighed. "Really try hard to be back as soon as possible, alright? I don't want you to get caught in the rain."

"Sure thing." He gave her a thumbs-up and a wink before opening the front door and leaving through it. "You'll keep an eye on our guest?"

"Of course, Richard." Julia told him as she went out on the front porch with him. "I am the more responsible one between us two."

"Duly noted." He stepped down from the front porch, taking his bicycle with him from under the awning. "I think the boy might have a broken rib so if he wakes up you might want to give him a dose of over the counter painkillers, alright? Bye, Julia, I'll be back soon."

She waved goodbye from the front porch as he prepared to leave for the other side of the island on his bicycle. _What a poetic scene, _he thought. When he turned back towards the house he could see Julia still standing on the porch, hugging her cardigan around her shoulders in the light breeze blowing inland from across the sea. Her long brown hair moved slightly in the wind, and he thought the expression on her face seemed a little uneasy thought she quickly started smiling and waving again the moment she noticed he was staring at her.

Once he was halfway to the town, Richard would start cursing inwardly as he realized some of the other problems associated with pilot-boy suddenly waking up. _If he wakes up while I'm not around and decides to start spouting off about what he was doing and his alignment. That would not be good, to say the least._ Still, it would lead to far more questions if he suddenly turned around and went back to the house without finishing his errands. _No self-respecting soldier would have that much trouble with discretion while caught in an unexpected situation any way. _He let that thought be a small comfort to him, enough so that he could put those concerns aside. _Julia trusts me anyway. I'll just explain things away like I always do. _

xxx

Julia Shue shivered as she watched Richard leave. It was windy today, and colder than she remembered it being since the two of them had arrived in Orb. The sky was still mostly clear, but when she looked up she could see heavy gray clouds beginning to roll in. _That's all rather ominous._ She found herself shivering again. The light sweater she was wearing over her sundress was not enough today. As soon as she could no longer see Richard as he pedaled away on the path that led to the main road, she hurried indoors.

_I really hate when it rains…_ She sighed heavily as she wandered around the first floor, tidying things up. She started with the kitchen and dining area, washing the dishes from breakfast and putting them in the drying rack. Then she stepped into the guestroom to pick up the books she had left there. When the first floor was more or less free of clutter that didn't belong, Julia went upstairs with her books and headed towards her bedroom.

When she passed by the door to Richard's room on the way, which was tightly shut as usual, she paused. For a moment she was tempted to turn towards it and reach out a hand to turn the knob. _No, you stupid girl, you can't do that. You have your privacy, let him have his. _Still, she found herself reaching out a hand slightly. _He's your friend. You trust him. _It was ridiculous for her to think anything else, and yet the voice playing the devil's advocate in her head continued feeding her traitorous thoughts. _But what if you can't? That last Commonality meeting before you left for the winter holidays… Kevin told you there was something suspicious going on. _Julia took another step towards the door and even touched the knob, but then she quickly pulled her hand away. _No. Richard is trustworthy. You know that. He's a fugitive now, just like you, and he hates the Atlantic Federation as much as you do._

"Why didn't you just take the time to sit down and actually explain things to me, Kevin? Julia asked the silent house around her as she entered her room. "That would make things so much clearer."

Kevin Langdon had been the leader of the Commonality group at Berkeley Pacifica. He'd been charismatic and a clear leader amongst them. The graduate student – come to think of it she'd never asked him what his field of study was, she'd just always assumed he was interested in the social sciences – had started to become different that last month before the arrests and the disappearances. Julia put her head in her hands as she thought back to the last few times she'd spoken to him. He'd behave normally during meetings, encouraging all of them to keep organizing meetings and events and rallies, but whenever she spoke to him alone he would be cryptic and rather paranoid.

_What was wrong with you? _Julia had never been able to figure it out, and she'd stopped trying not long after she and Richard had decided to stay in the Orb Union. Kevin had argued with her several times. Whenever Julia had asked him to explain what he was telling her about this or that suspicious happening, he'd lose his temper and yell. The second to last time they'd spoken, he had told her not to trust anyone else before abruptly turning around and leaving. Then, the very last time as she was about to take a cab to the airport, he'd been himself again. Kevin had been friendly, he seemed to have forgotten the fight, and he'd even left her with a small Christmas gift.

There it was, sitting on her dresser with the rest of her jewelry. Julia put away her books before she reached out and grabbed it, taking it with her as she let herself fall over backwards onto her bed. She lifted it up above her head, staring at it. It was an oversized metal locket, a little bigger than one of those very old-fashioned pocket-watches. _I always thought it was odd. I guess its meant to be trendy, but it's really not my style at all. _

Without warning, she started to cry. Thinking about it now, it finally hit her that she would never speak to him again. He'd been one of the first to be arrested, and then he'd died "resisting arrest." _I can't believe all we really did at the end was argue. Oh god, how could they do that? _When they'd first found out, Julia had cried, but it was only now that she really felt it. It made her feel very lost and alone. _What am I doing here? All I really had was my friends in Commonality. They wouldn't want me to sit around doing absolutely nothing like this. _

This self-pity thing really would not do. Hurriedly, Julia sat up and wiped the tears away from her face. _I… don't really know what I should do. I'll have to figure it out later. Except, I do know that sitting around crying won't accomplish anything. _With a sigh, she turned over the locket in her hands and fumbled with the tiny locking mechanism on its side. She'd never been able to open it, and she laughed bitterly as she found that she still couldn't.

"I'm so sorry, Kevin, for not knowing what to do." She smiled sadly as she stared at the locket some more. "I can't believe that's all I have left of you. A warning that still doesn't make any sense and this… thing you bought for me from a street vendor to make up for exploding at me, I wish I knew what I was supposed to do with those things." She sighed. "I'm just so sorry. Someday, when it's safe to go back, I will. I'll make sure your story is known, and that the Atlantic Federation never gets to do things like that again to innocent students. That much, I swear."

That promise to his memory made her feel better, though she wondered when she would be able to fulfill it. As it was, there was nothing she could do at the moment. From what she knew, Atlantic Federation law enforcement was both brutal and efficient. Judging from the way they'd targeted everyone who'd been a Commonality member at Berkeley Pacifica, she and Richard would likely be arrested the moment they returned to Earth Alliance soil, if they traveled through official channels. Even trying to communicate with anyone back there was also unlikely to be productive. It'd be monitored, intercepted, and things that communicated dissidence and sedition to EA blocs would be restricted. _But all of that's just you making excuses…_

"You know what? I won't worry about all of that today." She declared finally, placing the locket back on her dresser. "I'm just going to worry about the here and now." _And that involves a job. I should be watching Richard's patient._

When she remembered that, she felt faintly guilty again, and so she hurried downstairs to the guestroom. Julia peeked inside, and as was to be expected the boy remained sound asleep. Leaving the door to the guestroom open, Julia sat down heavily on one of the couches in the living room. From where she was sitting, she could see into the room. _There, I'm doing my job. _Sighing, she leaned her head back, unable to stop thinking about the past as she also drifted off to sleep.

xxx

_"Nicol!" A familiar voice was calling out to him as he simply… drifted. The person, a boy, laughed, and then called out to him again. "Nicol, what are you doing? Are you sleeping?_

_Nicol Amalfi groaned and tried to sit up, only to find that his muscles did not want to cooperate. He tried once more, and then again, before he was finally able to inch his way up, pushing one elbow against the ground for support. When he had, he looked around and found that… There was no ground. There was nothing around him except for a dark sky studded with millions upon millions of stars. He stood up slowly and turned to all sides, confused yet not particularly alarmed, though some part of him was certain that much wasn't right with the scene surrounding him. Now where had that voice been coming from?_

_A boy with an unruly mop of bright orange hair suddenly appeared and was running towards him, still laughing, with a friendly and easy-going smile lighting up his face. He was dressed in the red uniform of a ZAFT Elite Squadron member. That face, that hair color… Both were familiar with him. Nicol knew he remembered this boy, though it took him some time to find the name that went with the face._

_"Rusty?" Nicol finally asked, and then he found himself laughing too. "I haven't see you since you moved to Martius Three while we were in primary school?" Then he looked at that uniform again, and frowned. "When did you go off and join ZAFT?"_

_Now it was Rusty Mackenzie's turn to frown and be perplexed. "Did you hit your head or something? We're being deployed tomorrow, don't tell me you forgot that! It's the most important day of our lives, since we graduated anyway."_

_"Graduation? What do you mean?" Nicol stepped away from this old friend that he hadn't seen since they were around seven. He wondered why this boy was in an uniform that suggested the weight of a duty that none of them could possibly be ready for._

_"You're joking, Nicol. I didn't think you were the type to – that's something you'd leave to Elthmann or to me – you had me confused for a second." Rusty laughed again, and that unabashedly cheerful expression returned. "You're not very good at it, in all honesty."_

_"No, I'm not." Nicol insisted. All in all, this seemed to him far stranger than the unfamiliar and highly improbable setting around them._

_"Nicol, it's been barely two weeks since we graduated. You can't have forgotten in such a short time. We went through the academy together. Now we're going to defend ZAFT." The expression on the other boy's face grew serious then. "We're going to fight the Naturals for what they did for Bloody Valentine. Come on!" He turned then, and ran off._

_"Wait!" Nicol cried as he reached out to grab Rusty, to stop him, to demand an explanation, but the boy had already disappeared._

_"Nicol?" Another voice he knew well, this time of a young girl, came from behind him. "You don't belong here, not yet, at least."_

_"Lisette?" When he turned, he also kneeled so that he could be at eye level with his seven year old cousin. "I haven't seen you since…"_

_His eyes went wide with shock. He hadn't seen Lisette or the rest of his uncle Viktor's family since they'd… since they'd all died in the nuclear assault on Junius Seven. If he was seeing her, did that mean that he had died as well? Yet when he thought about how that could possibly have happened, he found that everything since receiving word of the destruction of all of Junius Seven was a blur in his mind. Whenever he felt like he was on the edge of capturing one memory or the other, he found that they all continued to elude him, always slipping away from his grasp._

_She smiled then, though it was a sad smile, and tossed her pale gold pigtails over her shoulder with an exaggerated shrug. After that, she spontaneously reached for him and embraced him as tightly as her fragile bird-like arms could. He wrapped his arms around her as well and shut his eyes, thinking of his family. He could feel tears gathering at the edges of his eyes. What did it matter how he'd gotten here? He could only count himself fortunate to see her again._

_"I miss you so much." Lisette told him as she pushed back from him, her brown eyes serious and the expression on her face suggesting a wisdom far beyond her years – a trait that was fairly common among Coordinator children due to their enhanced intelligence – she'd always been unusually precocious even when compared to her peers at school in the PLANTS. "I wish you could stay. Everyone misses you greatly, but you can't yet. It's far too soon."_

_"I didn't…?" The question he meant to ask was clear._

_"Almost, but not yet. It's not your time." There was that sad little half-smile again, the one that seemed rather foreign on a face as small and young as hers. _

_"How?" He wondered._

_"That's not… very important right now, Nicol. It might be, later, but that's for you to decide." That sad little half-smile remained on her face as she looked him straight in the eyes._

_"Rusty said… Did I really go and sign up for the Academy?" Nicol frowned, looking downwards as she took his hands in hers. "After what happened to you, to Uncle Viktor, to Aunt Ana, it…" He hesitated. "It would have been the right thing to do."_

_Lisette reached out and lifted his chin so that he would look her in the eyes again. "Is that really what you think?"_

_"Yes, I think so." It was relatively clear to him. "That's what everyone was talking about after the attacks happened, wasn't it?"_

_"But is it the right thing to do for you. Is it the way you want to face what is happening?"_

_Nicol thought about it, about who he was, about his feelings on the war, and then he answered her. "I… No… I don't think it is, in an ideal world." He sighed. "But the world around us now isn't exactly an ideal one, isn't it?"_

_"Then do your part to make it one." Lisette said, her expression brightening, as if that were easily possible. She leaned in to give him a fleeting kiss on the cheek. "All I want is for you to be happy, so that when you come back here, it's with no regrets. Do what you think is right, Nicol. We'll be waiting for you. I rather hope that it'll be a long time, though."_

_"I hope so too, Lisette." He said, finally letting himself smile as well. "I love you."_

_"I love you too. I have to go now. Wake up soon, alright." She waved at him as she turned to go._

_"I'll try…" His voice trailed off as she too, disappeared._

_This time, no other person from his past appeared, and so Nicol Amalfi was left entirely alone to contemplate things. He frowned as he stood there, thinking of the past. He found that everything from the more distant past remained as clear in his mind as ever, yet when he reached out to grasp at the memories after Bloody Valentine, the memories continued to elude him. With that missing, he felt as if he was unable to fully understand what was happening to him and what Lisette was telling him. She'd told him that it was time for him to wake up. What did she mean? Then he looked around again, and found the night sky around him fading to black._

In a small summer house on the coast of one of the Orb Union's smaller islands, Nicol Amalfi's eyes opened suddenly, and he cried out in surprise. When he glanced around, he found that the setting was entirely unfamiliar to him, and he was disconcerted to hear the sounds of pounding rain and the crashing of ocean waves around him as he struggled to sit up. Everything ached, and when he raised his hands so he could see them, he found several bandaged cuts and fading bruises. _Where am I?_

xxx

"Damn it all to hell!" Richard Evnan cursed viciously as he somehow managed to slip and fall yet again in the rain that fell around him in a continuous and torrential downpour when he was finally within sight of the house.

The excessive rain had made the trip home far more difficult than he'd assumed it would be. Despite having worn the hooded, water-resistant jacket that Julia had reminded him to bring, Richard had gotten completely soaked through. His hair, already on the rather long side, and tending to get in his face when it was dry, had plastered itself to his forehead and against his eyes. Even when he'd pushed his hair away from his face, the water had continued to run down it, obscuring his vision. The hood had been absolutely no use, slipping off his head almost immediately every time he pushed it up. All in all, it had been a miserable trip.

The fact that he had made it home at last did not do much to make him feel better. It had barely started raining when he'd finished his errands in town, and it'd been fairly light at first. He had assumed that he would be able to make it home before the storm well and truly started. _Clearly, I assumed wrong._ He thought acidly as he pulled himself up yet again from the puddles of rainwater on the path and started dragging his bike towards the front porch. _This has, altogether, been the best goddamned twenty-four hours of my life, ever. I should never have gone outside yesterday. I should never have gotten the brilliant idea of dragging the boat out and investigating. Damn it all!_

Well, at this point there was no helping it. _At least I've made it back._ When he'd finished dragging his bike up the porch steps and left it under the awning to dry, he looked around one last time before going in the house, glaring savagely at the very gray setting all around him. _We're near the damned equator. This is definitely not tropical weather._ Though pilot-boy was not necessarily at fault – the rainy season would have started anyway and the errands would have had to be run eventually – Richard found it very easy to blame their unexpected guest. _The one time I choose to be a Good Samaritan… _Such a thing never brought about anything good, he was deciding.

"Julia, my dear, I'm finally home!" Richard called out as he entered, though the cheery expression on his face faded instantaneously at what he saw when he entered and his jaw practically dropped to the floor.

"Oh no, Richard, you're completely soaked." Julia got up from where she was sitting. "Isn't it wonderful though, your patient woke up. His name's Nicol Amalfi."

"Good to know." Richard said as he glared at the boy sitting on the couch.

"I wanted to get him some of your clothes, but I didn't want to go into your room or anything without asking…" Julia was explaining. "You could probably use some tea, I'll go get another cup from the kitchen."

The scene was particularly shocking to him because it was just so… ordinary. Julia, that idiot girl, had made tea and brought it out on a tray as if they were entertaining a more conventional guest. The boy, Nicol or whatever, looked none the worse for the wear despite his recent ordeal and was simply sitting there dressed in the t-shirt and shorts that had been under his flight suit and wrapped in a blanket on top of that. It was hardly the first thing one expected any soldier to do when he or she woke up in a completely unfamiliar setting after nearly being killed in a mobile suit battle, to say the least.

xxx

Author's Notes: I honestly can't believe I left this story for about two years without updating when I was still interested in writing it. This time, I hope to do a better job actually finishing it, and I have a lot planned for it at least. Anyway, this is more or less a completely new chapter, and definitely has not been through half as much editing as the previous two parts, which I edited rather heavily. So if there's anything wrong, typos or inconsistencies, or the like, just let me know. The plot moves along at a much faster pace now than it would have two years ago, though I'e managed to make Nicol's waking up very, very anticlimactic.

ETA for next part: sometime within the next week.

I would love any reviews and will do individual review comments next chapter, should they be needed. I would be really thankful for any sort of constructive criticism or comments.

Thanks so much for reading!


	4. Part 3: Let it Rain

**Significantly edited 1/9/2008.**

xxx

Part 003

Let it Rain

xxx

"Julia, my dear, I'm finally home!"A tall blond man with hair and clothes completely soaked by the rain announced as he opened the door, the smile on his face disappearing completely as he looked around the sparsely decorated sitting room.

Nicol Amalfi could not help but notice the vaguely hostile glint in the man's blue eyes, though he hid it very quickly. Nicol felt his own eyes narrowing slightly. Something about this person was slightly off, his instincts raged, though Nicol found himself unable to explain what it was.

The girl who'd introduced herself as Julia Shue stood up quickly, whispering to him, "This is Richard Evnan," as an aside while she ran to greet him. "Oh no, Richard, you're completely soaked. Isn't it wonderful though, your patient woke up. His name's Nicol Amalfi."

"Good to know." Richard replied, his eyes still turned towards Nicol.

I wanted to get him some of your clothes, but I didn't want to go into your room or anything without asking." Julia was explaining as she fussed around him, helping him hang his jacket up on a hook by the door. "You could probably use some tea, I'll go get another cup from the kitchen."

"So your name is Nicol, huh?" Richard asked, and though the tone of his voice was not unkind, it still managed to seem cold. "Tell me, how exactly did you end up on the island across the way? I've been wondering."

Nicol thought a moment before he answered, not quite certain of how to explain. "I don't remember. She – Julia – said I was in an accident and that you rescued me. Thank you for taking me in. I don't actually remember how it happened."

"Is that so?" The young blond man raised his eyebrows, as if surprised. "You don't remember anything at all that might help us figure it out? We only want to help get you back to where you belong as soon as possible."

"Yes, I'm afraid I don't really remember much that's useful. I know who I am, but I don't remember anything recent. I wish I did. I don't want to impose for much longer."

Being polite came easily to him, and Nicol thought that if it weren't for the circumstances that had led to it, this conversation was almost normal even if the situation was anything but. The last thing he could remember for certain was watching a newsflash flicker across a television screen reporting the complete destruction of Junius Seven in a nuclear assault from OMNI. He remembered being horrified as he realized that Junius Seven was where his uncle Viktor's family lived. He remembered thinking of his cousin Lisette, and then of all the others who had died. Clearly, some time had passed since then, but he had no way of knowing how much and what had transpired in that indefinite window.

"Did you explain this to Julia already?" Richard was also impeccably polite, though there was still a slight edge to his voice that Nicol couldn't really figure out. The smile on Richard's face was a strange one that didn't seem sincere. "Or did she not ask?"

"That's unfair, talking about me while I'm out of the room." Julia interrupted as she placed an empty mug on the coffee table. "Don't tease me Richard, but I was asleep. Nicol's only just woken me."

"You really are getting into a habit of doing that at the worst times." Richard told her, arching an eyebrow and clearly referring to some in-joke. "Are you narcoleptic, pray tell?"

"Would you stop being so sarcastic, Richard?" Julia said, frowning, as she poured him some tea from the teapot she'd brought out earlier. "You're leaving the worst first impression." To Nicol, she smiled, "He's not usually like this. He's just in a bad mood because he was caught in the rain."

Between waking up unable to remember how he had found his way to this particular house in the middle of nowhere and the injuries he had obviously and inexplicably sustained recently, Nicol found the whole situation he was in to be very disconcerting.It didn't make any sense. He'd never even been to the Earth's surface as far as he could remember. He certainly couldn't think of a legitimate reason why he'd be in the Orb Union, of all places. _Last I remember, civilian travel outside of the countries directly aligned with PLANT isn't even possible. The Orb government doesn't even issue visas to citizens from Earth Alliance powers or the PLANTS._ It was altogether very strange, especially the way this Richard Evnan behaved.

Leaning back slightly into the couch, Nicol winced as the dull ache in his side returned. Due to the wounds, it had taken him quite some time to get up out of bed. At first, he'd been stunned to see all the bandages over his arms and legs, and the bruises. _At least they're mostly healed over already. _The outward evidence of the injuries he had sustained in the "accident" or whatever had happened would remain for quite some time, but he didn't still feel as if he'd survived a nearly fatal accident the day before. _I recovered very quickly…_

"Are you sure you don't want any of the ibuprofen?" Julia asked, concerned. "Oh, and you must be cold too, and hungry? You haven't eaten in a day, and Richard, you probably haven't eaten since breakfast right? Richard, do you think you could go upstairs and let Nicol borrow some of your clothes? I'll put something together for dinner really quickly."

"Don't believe this housewife act she's putting on." Richard told him with a wink. "Julia's a god-awful cook."

This clearly was another one of their in-jokes as she didn't seem to take offense at all. Instead, she laughed. "I don't deny it, but it's my turn and Richard needs to get himself a change of clothes anyway."

"Point taken." Richard said, also laughing before standing up and turning to Nicol, gesturing at him to follow. "Come on, you must be cold in just that. My clothes should fit you, more or less."

"Thank you." Nicol said, as he began to follow the taller man upstairs, still trying to process the situation he'd woken up to.

Unsure of whether he should enter, Nicol stood in the narrow hallway while Richard rummaged through the closet in his room. Like the rest of the house, it was very sparsely and impersonally decorated. _Come to think of it, there aren't any photographs up on the walls or anywhere else in this house. _That also seemed strange to Nicol. _This place is nothing like home. _The memory of home, on Maius One, was very clear to him. It was as if he could see all of the personal touches he and his parents had put into their home: the piano – Richard and Julia had a piano too, though it was covered and had seemed dusty – all the pictures and the photos and the other knickknacks. _I don't know how I'm going to get back there… _The realization made him feel very lost, here in this strange place with no memory of how he had gotten there.

"Here you go." Richard's voice abruptly shook Nicol from his thoughts as he a light sweater and a pair of jeans were pushed into his hands. "The bathroom's over there."

"Thank you." Nodding in gratitude, Nicol started to walk towards the door his host of sorts had pointed out.

Suddenly, the taller man reached out and grabbed Nicol's arm, stopping him short. When Nicol turned angrily, he found that Richard's oddly distant and cryptic smile had returned. "If you do remember anything else though, please let me know. Don't bother Julia with it, she's a complete innocent, do you understand? That'd be a big help, alright?" It seemed as if Richard wanted to add more, and he almost did, though he changed his mind and went back into his room, without waiting for a response.

_What the… hell… is going on? _Though normally not given to cursing, Nicol Amalfi was at a loss searching for other ways of expression his feelings about the situation he was now in. _Is it because they're Naturals that they're this odd? _That was unfair, he knew, and to be completely honest he could not tell if Richard or Julia were Coordinators or Naturals. _Orb's a neutral place at least, so that's not even something we have to worry about. _Still, thoughts of genetic difference reminded him of the ongoing war. _That complicates everything else. It might make getting home almost impossible_

Thoughts of war reminded him of the family he'd lost._ How… long… has it been exactly since Bloody Valentine? _He wanted to know, needed to know. However, without a full understanding of the situation he had abruptly woken up to, he felt that it would not be best to ask about it. _Clearly, something about this Richard Evnan doesn't add up. _Resolving not to show weakness or anything but calm courtesy to his hosts until he had more of a sense of who they were, Nicol pushed those thoughts from his mind as he finished changing and prepared to go downstairs. Outside, the rain continued to fall in torrents from the dark sky.

xxx

Kyo Yoshino stood in a hallway right off the locker rooms at the base, his eyes unfocused and unseeing as they were turned straight ahead. "Shit…" He whispered, as he felt the full impact of what had just happened to their team. Leaning against the wall, his red uniform jacket unbelted, he put his head in his hands.

Just like that, Yzak Jule was the last remaining of a group that'd started out with five. Dearka Elthmann and Athrun Zala had both disappeared during the battle with the Archangel and the Strike. They'd nearly taken down the Archangel, and last they'd observed before retreating, an explosion had claimed both the Aegis and the Strike. The Buster had also been shot down at some point in the heat of the battle. Though they'd been successful with some of the mission objectives they'd been pursuing as of late with the seeming destruction of the Strike, the costs now seemed much too high. He slid down against the wall until he was sitting on the ground, still with his head in his hands, suddenly feeling exhausted.

"What do we do now, Miguel?" Kyo wished that he knew the answer to that question. "What could Commander Le Creuset have hoped to accomplish, sending us on this mission without his supervision?"

Although it was not a good thing to speak ill of those who were "missing in action" and possibly as good as dead, the part of him that remained rational could understand how such a colossal failure could occur. _Even if we had three of the Gundams on our side, cutting-edge as that technology is… That was exactly the problem. Going into battle like that, with just the three of them, with their emotions running high, refusing to wait until reinforcements could be mobilized… And now there's only one._

Kyo had launched himself into the fray as well, in a standard-issue Gin, but it'd gotten damaged by shots fired from the Archangel not long into the battle. _I might as well not have been there. That's a crying shame; even one of their Skygraspers was able to have more of an effect on the battle than you were, primitive as those things are. And you call yourself a ZAFT Elite. _Yzak was the only one remaining with them now who could honestly say he had left any sort of impact on the conflict. The Duel had taken on some damage during the battle as well, but it had been able to return.

When Yzak and Kyo had gotten back to the Carpentaria base, the younger boy had been enraged, as could be expected. While they were in the infirmary, he'd yelled at the medics to hurry as they bandaged his many wounds, and clearly, they'd done so. Though the two had arrived on base at the same time, the younger boy had gotten out sooner. He'd ordered the crew to go out on the submarine again as soon as the medics had allowed him to leave, while they were still working on Kyo. _Whatever his other problems, he's dedicated. He shouldn't have gone out again though. There's nothing more we can do. We don't have the authority to mobilize a large enough search team. Our mandate here was limited to taking down the Strike and the Archangel if possible. _

Almost an instant after those thoughts ran through his mind, Kyo felt badly about having them in the first place. _It's only been what, six or seven months since they graduated? Rusty died, then Nicol, and now Athrun and Dearka are gone too. Yzak's the only one of their group left._ In some ways, Kyo could sympathize, having lost one of his own closest comrades not long after being assigned to the Le Creuset team. _They're all so young, and to top it all off, Le Creuset leaves them almost alone and completely in charge of a mission that even the whole of the team couldn't accomplish. It's not even as if the mission was a good idea in the first place. Emotions have always run too high on this team ever since we infiltrated Heliopolis to get the Gundams in the first place. This shouldn't even have been allowed to happen._

"Shit…" Kyo Yoshino whispered again as he continued to sit there in the hallway, completely shell-shocked by all that had happened in the last two days alone.

The sound of running feet interrupted his reverie as one of the soldiers stationed at the base stopped right in front of him and saluted. "There's news, Elite Yoshino."

Having been assigned to a part of the team where he was essentially low man on the totem pole made it strange as he distantly remembered that relative to most of the rank and file, he did hold a position of some authority. _Even if it's only because I managed to get high marks at the academy and it hardly matters now._ Slowly, giving himself time to fully regain his composure, he stood up.

"Stand down, no need for formalities. What is it?" Kyo said, as calmly as he could while hiding all signs of his earlier grief. "Has Commander Le Creuset contacted us with further orders?"

"Affirmative," The other soldier said, as Kyo noted sadly that he was also only a mere boy, "Commander Le Creuset said he would arrive himself within the next two days. He would like you to prepare a report on everything that's happened since the temporary Team Zala was formed."

"Understood, I'll begin drafting the report immediately." Kyo replied, keeping his face impassive though reliving the events of the previous two days was not high on the list of things he would preferred doing. _I'd almost rather go into battle against the Archangel myself… almost. _

"Oh, and we've been contacted by the Orb military base at Onogoro island. One of their patrol ships found Elite Zala. He's alive, even if he probably won't be able to write the report himself before Commander Le Creuset arrives, but… That's good news."

"Yes, you're right, it is." Kyo replied, still feeling as emotionally drained as he had before he knew that Athrun, at least, had survived.

_Doesn't really make the situation that much better, we've still had two casualties in two days and lost three of four Gundams. _With that thought, he made his way back to his room, with a sigh of resignation as he prepared himself for the lengthy, painful process of writing the mission report.

xxx

"And here's the files you asked for regarding Vincent Balerion and his tenure as CEO of Balerion industries as well as files on Balerion Industries since that time – he retains controlling interest though he left his formal position there in favor of entering politics – and there are some files on his political allies." As much as it made her sound like a spoiled brat with no sense of the real world, Sansa Adin - youngest and newest of the staff writers at the Majuro Times – was almost thankful for the recent chaos in the newly resurgent United States of South America.

As a very inexperienced foreigner whose position had been obtained through her father's connections and string pulling, Sansa was not particularly respected by her coworkers at the most prominent of the newspapers published out of the Orb Union's capital city. Just as she could not help but feel some disdain for the newspaper as well as the city and the nation around it, having lived and gone to school near cities far more cosmopolitan than any part of orb, the Editor in Chief and older staff writers did not hide their disdain for her. _Just because my last position was at a fashion magazine and involved working with things that won't make their way here until trade restrictions with the Earth Alliance powers are lifted does not mean I am incompetent, damn it!_

With the recent attempted coup and spate of assassinations throughout the United States of South America, which had reasserted itself with a brand-spanking new army less than a year before following an Atlantic Federation invasion, everyone in the newsroom had been busy. It was the first time since her father had handed her a one-way ticket to Majuro, the keys to an apartment in the city, and the job he'd as good as bought for her before practically shoving her into the cab going into the airport the day of her flight that Sansa had actually been given serious journalistic work.

_Even if it only involves collecting information for everyone else and my name won't exactly appear on the front page anytime soon…_ Now that the situation in South America had been more or less resolved, with the former Minister of Trade taking over the position vacated by the murdered President De Celtigar after having put down the attempted coup, Sansa had no doubt that she would soon be shunted out of the way again.

"Tomorrow morning I want you to head out to Namorik again and do another piece on the Revered Malchio's charitable work there." The Editor in Chief said without looking up as she deposited the files on his desk.

_Right on schedule. _"Yes sir." She managed to hide the resentment she felt at the dismissive tone in his voice. In the last several months she'd gotten very good at that. "I'll have the piece ready for you by the end of the week."

Quite predictably, the man did not respond, and she turned to leave his office in silence. _Another fluffy, feel-good piece on the good works of the Reverend Kaios Malchio and his volunteers. That will surely be bracing, cutting-edge journalism. _In her mind, at least, eighteen-year-old Sansa Adin could be as sarcastic as she liked. She had not asked to be here, had not wanted to leave her home in the Atlantic Federation and the job she had gotten on her own merits. Even so, her father had done as many others of the sort who summered in Cape Cod or the Hamptons and stank of money and sent his children away to the neutral territories where they could be comparatively safe from the war. _At least he doesn't expect me to treat it as a lengthy vacation._ All in all, it was almost reasonable for her co-workers to think of her as some kind of spoiled child, even if she had never asked for any of this.

Here in Orb, Sansa had no connections of her own, and there was no market for the type of work experience and credentials she had, and so she was stuck here working with people who would rather she didn't exist. Since she had started at the Majuro Times several months ago they had sent her to do very little but write brief pieces buried deep in obscurity in the "Other Local News" column about once every other week. For the most part, those assignments were always rehashes of what she'd already done, more pieces lauding the Reverend Malchio's kindness and the dedication of the volunteers who had pledged themselves to the religious order he was a part of for the indefinite period of time until the war's formal end. Her requests for some variety had always been ignored.

_Well, it could be worse._ She decided as she drove back to her apartment. _At least they're interesting people to be around. _Revered Malchio was, in fact, a very significant figure though she was sent to cover one of the less newsworthy aspects of his work. Even his work providing a refuge for war orphans was still very worthy of recognition. _Maybe I should join his volunteers_, she thought half-heartedly, _though I'm awful with children, so that would never work. _

When she'd arrived home, the first thing she did was make a call to one of those volunteers, to give them some forewarning that she'd soon be underfoot again for another day. "Hello Brother Cristoph." She said, when the familiar voice of Cristoph Marlow answered.

"Miss Adin… What a pleasant surprise." Came the voice from the other end.

"I'll be coming by tomorrow morning, probably after the children have gone to school. I just thought I'd warn you." She said, with a bit of mirth. "You all will have another appearance in the paper."

For a while there was no response except for some muffled whispering, as if Brother Cristoph were talking to someone else. Finally, he responded. "Are you sure it has to be tomorrow? It might not be very convenient."

This was unusual, Sansa thought. "Really? What do you mean by that?"

Another pause and more muffled whispering, but now he seemed to have changed his mind after whatever discussion they were having. "Actually, it won't be a problem, but we won't be able to have you visit for the whole day. Is that alright?"

"Um, sure, that's great." Sansa said, not quite sure what to make of this, or how she might even begin to guess what was going on. Well, nothing to do in such a situation except to just come out and ask the question. "So what's going on exactly?"

He chuckled, but didn't exactly seem to be in the mood to explain. "I'll tell you tomorrow, maybe, it's a bit complicated. I would tell you that it's nothing, but I doubt you'd be convinced, being a journalist and having a journalist's curiosity and all."

"Oh, I'm not really that kind of journalist by nature." She assured him, "though you are making me curious about it."

"We'll see when you get here tomorrow, alright?" He said before saying goodbye and then they hung up on each other, leaving Sansa to ponder the rain that continued to fall heavily outside, an early expression of the rainy season that was soon to come.

xxx

Richard had never quite understood what it really meant to be in desperate need of a stiff drink until now. _ZAFT-boy wakes up and claims to very conveniently have amnesia thereby making things many times more complicated for yours truly. Now that is Murphy's Law at its finest. _On a lark, he'd bought a bottle of tequila the first time he'd gone out to get the groceries since arriving on the island. He hadn't touched it since then, but now he was glad he had it. _Julia will be pissed._ Grabbing a glass from the dish-rack, he poured himself the rough equivalent of a generous shot. _Right now, I don't care._

"Bottoms up," he announced to the empty air and silence around him before he downed it in one go, without even blinking.

_That, at least, I can still manage. _He thought with something vaguely like satisfaction. Even if it burned just a bit in the back of his throat, he withstood it easily and smiled _It'll be at least two-three more before I can even feel it, I expect, unless my tolerance has tanked like my fitness…_

"Richard? Our guest's gone to sleep and… What is – why do you have that?" Julia asked him as he was just about to pour himself another shot. "What is with you today? Just, you were being so rude, and now you're drinking? Why in the world would you do that?"

She wasn't angry, exactly, though this was as close to yelling as Richard had ever seen her get. She just sounded… disappointed… or something like that. _As if she has the right to that. She doesn't actually know the half of who I am or what's going on._ That though, was definitely an argument to be had another day.

"Drinking now and then is a fairly normal pursuit for people who are of age, you know?" Richard told her acidly, though he twisted the cap back onto the tequila and put it away.

"It's not that, I don't care about that." Julia said, leaning against the doorway with her arms folded. "I went to college too, you know. I just don't know why you've been acting so weird since you came back. What's bothering you?"

"You don't think it's weird that he wakes up and just has amnesia and can't explain how he got here? Didn't you hear during dinner? Last he remembers, he was in the PLANTS. There's no legit way he could end up from that point A to this point B, Julia. It doesn't add up." He kept himself from yelling, though it took some degree of effort. Exhaustion was straining his temper. "There has to be a lot that he's not telling us."

"You think it's strange that he can't remember? You said yourself he was in a crash that could have been fatal. He could have hit his head, this is as normal as anything could be in this situation." Though she did not yell, she still seemed to be rather upset at him. "It's not his fault he was in that accident. We should help him figure out what happened and how to get him back home as soon as possible."

_Good god, Julia's naïve. _Richard thought, though this made things that much easier for him. While she was taking everything ZAFT-boy said at face value, which annoyed Richard to no end, she more or less did the same for him. This way, at least, the burden was off him when in came to coming up with ways of explaining things. _Everything stays buried that much longer this way. No questions about why I know things or suspect things your average civilian wouldn't. _

With a nod, Richard forced himself to agree with her because that was the easiest thing to do. "You're right. I'm just really tired from today – getting caught in the rain and all that – I think I might be getting a cold or something. I just had this headache the whole way through dinner. Hey, the last two days have been stressful. Sorry I was acting weird."

"Oh no, don't apologize." Julia told him. "I'm sorry too. I think I was overreacting. I'm also kind of exhausted. I think I'm going upstairs. Get some sleep alright?"

"Sure thing," he said, with a cheery wave.

He heard the sound of her footsteps retreating up the stairs, leaving him alone in the kitchen again to think things through. At this rate, whether Nicol or whatever was lying about the amnesia or not, he'd likely continue to be their "guest" well into the foreseeable future. Until the war itself stopped, or some sort of truce between OMNI and ZAFT was reached, there was no way ZAFT-boy could be returned to his own sort. _It's not as if we can pick up the phone and call the ZAFT forces stationed at Carpentaria and ask them if they would kindly swing by and pick the kid up._

This reminded him of his earlier outburst, the one Julia had not seen. _I'll bet he's not feeling too welcome right now. _Admittedly, Richard's "warning" to the younger boy had been rude, not to mention very unwise. _It was not the best way of trying to keep more difficult questions from popping up, was it? _He scoffed at his own foolishness and then he suddenly yawned. _What I said about these last two days being stressful though, that's the truth no matter how you look at things._ What he needed now, more than anything else, was a good night's sleep. Everything else could sure as hell wait 'til morning.

xxx

Author's Notes: So I've just written in the way to introduce the next half of my very large original cast. Is it too much at once? I tried to drop some hints earlier to make it less abrupt (Julia's textbook, the newscast about "chaos" in South America and so on). I'm determined to include the "new UN fleet" in this story and it's fairly important to the later plot.

I did, however, decide to significantly edit the way I'm introducing them, which is the version you see of this chapter now. It's not a particularly good thing to do as a writer, but it was a very necessary set of edits to make. The big reveal I kind of put into this chapter had very little place where it was, and might not have a place anywhere in "Soldier in the Sky" at all. Lydias De Celtigar and co. will soon be introduced next chapter (the previous version of this chapter had already introduced them and way too much about their lives).

Review Responses:

Knives91: Thank you so much for reading!

Darkwitchling: Thanks for reading. I definitely realized how much Kyo introspection – and endless references to Miguel who is not only an old friend but kind of his only one throughout his relatively brief but eventful posting with the Le Creuset team – sounds like a great deal of slightly angsty yaoi out there. In my mind they're just close friends and teammates, but who even knows? If you notice any glaring errors, just point them out.

Happy 2008 and thanks so much for reading! As always, I appreciate all reviews and can say that as spring semester approaches reviews definitely do encourage me to procrastinate with writing fanfiction rather than youtube .


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